Amsterdam Live
Liverpool, O2 Academy
Pele’s Fireworks in full + Amsterdam classics
Saturday 5 March
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Liverpool band Amsterdam will start recording their third album for CIA Records this spring. Also on CIA roster are The Stranglers and The Bluetones.

This year the band are aiming to better 2008 which saw them duet with Elvis Costello on EMI Records, storm Glastonbury and release 2nd album Arm in Arm which ended up being voted 14th best ever album out of Liverpool by the local press which when you consider the Beatles released ten is some feat!

The bands most famous song Does this train stop on Merseyside (the previous single ‘The Journey hit number 32 in the UK charts) was John Peel’s second favourite song, John would regularly be too emotional to speak on the radio after playing it.

The song itself got a further lease of life as one of the centrepieces of Irish legend Christy Moores latest album which spent five weeks at the top spot in his home country.

The gang have also performed live four times for Janice Long on her BBC 2 show. Ian Prowse the engine room behind Amsterdam also enjoyed previous success in the 1990’s with his band Pele who recorded three albums for Polydor/M&G.

Amsterdam are currently a riot of a seven piece band whose real forte is in the live arena. 2011 will be twenty years since Ian Prowse’s first band ‘Pele recorded the debut classic celtic pop album Fireworks for Polydor.

Fireworks only clocks in at a fast and furious 37 minutes so Amsterdam will also perform a set of great tunes from the Noughties as well as tasters from the new album.

The album spawned four singles with hits in the U.K. Portugal, France and even a number one in South Africa. It’s one …of those great hungry debut albums from a young band eager to take on the world, there isn’t a weak song on it. The seven piece Amsterdam extravaganza aim to do real musical justice to the spirit of this great record.

If you have any old friends from University in the early 90’s who remember those fantastic nights in Loughborough, Warwick, Wolverhampton, Kent, Glasgow, Nottingham, Stoke, Portsmouth, Leeds and many others then let them know their fav. album is being performed in full for TWO NIGHTS ONLY.” Liverpool show info: http://www.o2academyliverpool.co.uk/event/21194/amsterdam-play-pele-s-debut-album-fireworks-in-ful-tickets/Details

All up to date info and lively discussion at: http://www.amsterdam-music.com
Or listen at: http://www.myspace.com/amsterdamhq

Watch at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf2QNDZpeTw

Wednesday 9th March - Death Vessel plus Rozi Plain
Static Gallery, 23 Roscoe Lane, Liverpool L1 9JD
Tel: 0151 707 0770
£7.00 advance

“Thibodeau is blessed with a strikingly androgynous voice” **** Mojo

“Thibodeau’s voice is the most striking instrument on the album” ****Q

“While the versatility of the band is impressive, they’re fighting a losing battle if they think they can divert your attention for long from Thibodeau’s voice and its unearthly melodies.” **** The Sunday Times (cd of the week)

Death Vessel is a neo-traditional folk band from Rhode Island, signed to Sub Pop and ATP Recordings, headed by Joel Thibodeau. It is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. People will call it many things. Few will get it right. This is Death Vessel.

Joel moved from Boston to Providence in 1998, later spending a few years in Brooklyn around 2004 before settling back down in the outskirts of Providence last year. In the mid-‘90s, Joel and his brother Alec formed String Builder—a musical partnership that would produce several albums (Mortar & From the Curb, String Builder) and a few singles. As that came to an end, Joel began writing songs under the name Death Vessel, working closely with Erik Carlson, whose songwriting input and unique guitar tonality helped shape the band’s early sound. Death Vessel’s debut album Stay Close was released in 2005 to critical acclaim.

His last album Nothing Is Precious Enough for Us was recorded with longtime producer/collaborator Pete Donnelly (The Figgs) at his New Jersey studio, and various locales across the northeast with no steady band. Joel himself plays acoustic, electric and steel guitar, as well as drums, harmonica, mandolin, percussion and keyboard parts.

But the core and heart of the music belongs to Joel. His latticework foundation of acoustic finger-picking, paired with his unexpectedly high, peaked vocals, alternately keening, carousing and utterly captivating, is more than enough to sustain and propel this record to an otherworldly exuberance. In fact, for the past few years Joel has toured primarily as a solo performer, and the songs are inarguably mesmerizing and relevant in that setting. But on record they take on a new life, thanks to his and Donnelly’s inspired, and often unusual, arrangements. The songs careen from triumphant and rejoicing (“Circa”), to sweet and sparse (“Jitterakadie”), and sometimes affect a sly, cornet-drizzled jazz feel (“The Widening”) or the warm air of banjo-laden campfire songs (“Obadiah in Oblivion,” “Fences Around Field”). Elsewhere, vaguely sinister songs are punctuated and often slashed about by searing electric guitar lines (“Exploded View,” “Peninsula”) and bursts of sound that are as satisfying, and rocking, as they are dire.

“Now I am versed in silence/my throat hurts, not from yelling but from holding back,” Joel sings on “Block My Eye,” the album’s opening track. And that’s ok, because the music speaks for itself. And nothing ever sounded so loud, and so clear.

The musical reach is fully extended—deep into the past, grounded in the present and nodding to the future. Owing to the gritty avarice of Joel’s singular spirit, voice and musicality, the songs—though rooted in a more traditional feel of folk and early Americana—sound as progressive, experimental and modern as they do antique and old-world. In fact, his hyper-tuneful and wholly spellbinding melodies seem to owe as much to ‘60s pop, rock and jazz as they do to bluegrass, old-time or country. The music is haunting and spiritual, mysterious and kind, ageless and contemporary, soulful and psychedelic. In short, it’s where the requiem meets rock ‘n’ roll.

Behold the wonderfully intimate and human songcraft of Rozi Plain, born Rosalind Leyden in the leafy-greens of Winchester 25 years ago. Having moved to Bristol, set up the Cleaner Records collective with a collection of musical friends and family and released her debut album “Inside Over Here” on King Creosote’s Fence Records in late-2008, Rozi has been busy bringing her beautiful, enchantingly brittle and understated music to the people. Whether alone with guitar or joined by an assembly of her regular co-conspirators (including François & The Atlas Mountains, This Is The Kit and Sleeping States, all of whom she also joins for their sets in a glorious musical swapping shop), her songs possess a certain fragile magnetism that can hush the gabblers in the drawing of a breath, and make any room seem like home. The rare and humble pleasures of Rozi’s live show have led to tours across Europe, the UK & USA with notables including Devendra Banhart (who fell for “Inside Over Here” and named it one of his albums of last year), James Yorkston and Viking Moses, and appearances at festivals such as Green Man, End Of The Road, Shambala and Fence’s flagship event Homegame. Recordings have been tied to tape and tinkered with for her soon-to-follow second album, with a 7” due imminently on Need No Water Records. In the meantime, she’d like to come and play for you…